Which .NET Standard Version To Target

When I migrated Dandago.Finance to .NET Core yesterday, there was something I overlooked. I realised this when I tried to install the resulting package, targeting .NET Standard 1.6, in a new project. It worked fine in a .NET Core console application, but not in one targeting the full .NET Framework:

Targeting each version of .NET Standard means supporting the corresponding versions of .NET Core and .NET Framework upwards. For instance, if we target .NET Standard 1.4, then we support .NET Framework 4.6.1 and up, and .NET Core 1.0 and up.

But since Dandago.Finance was built to target .NET Standard 1.6, then .NET Framework 4.6.2 and earlier could not use it (since the first version it supports is “vNext”, whatever that means in this context).

So in practice, in order to maximise a library’s compatibility, you will want to target the lowest possible version of .NET Standard. You can do this by changing the target framework from the project settings:

In the case of Dandago.Finance, .NET Standard 1.1 provided insufficient API coverage to make it work:

Targeting .NET Standard 1.2 made Dandago.Finance compile just fine, and I verified that the resulting package installs fine for console applications targeting .NET Framework 4.5.1 and up (as per compatibility chart), and .NET Core 1.0 and up.